AN UNFAVOURABLE COMPARISON.

Gisborne Times, Volume V, Issue 135, 18 June 1901, Page 4

AN UNFAVOURABLE COMPARISON.

An instructive article appears in this month’s issue of the New Zealand Trade Review from the pen of the editor, Mr Samuel Carroll, who is also secretary of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce. The writer says, “While the area under grain has been, fluctuating and non-pro-gressive, and that under green and other crops, though it has increased in fifteen years by fully 70 per cent., is not considerable, the area under grass ploughed and unploughed has increased in that period by over 100 per cent., and has reached a total not much short of eleven million acres. The bulk of land under cereals and other crops is found in the South Island, but as regards grazing lands of the colony, the increase is far larger in the North Island than in the South. Thus, we see that while the increase in fifteen years in the area of grassed lands is equal to over 140 per cent, in the North Island, it is less than 70 per cent, in the South Island, and especially that in the last five yearly .period, out of a total in-'' crease of two million acres, as much as 1,5-58,000 acres is in the North Island. Of course, by far the larger part of these grazing lands is occupied by sheep. The flocks of the colony as a whole sh ow a substantial increase from 1885 to 1895, and only a comparatively unimportant diminution in the five years 1896 to 1900. “ But the increase must be credited entirely to the North Island. The South Island, indeed, finishes in the year 1900 with a smaller total than it had in 1895, while the numbers in the North Island have been more than doubled.”